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- Written by: Alex Sosnowski
As the North American monsoon continues over the southwestern United States this week, AccuWeather meteorologists say that shifting moisture may allow the concentration of drenching storms to ease up in New Mexico and Arizona.
But storms, some with downpours, some with no rain, are forecast to ramp up in portions of Nevada, California, Oregon and Idaho in the coming days.
Prior to Sunday night, with a couple of exceptions this summer, thunderstorms associated with the monsoon have largely been absent thus far. There have been a couple of incidents of spotty showers and thunderstorms.
During June 17-18, and more recently on July 13, showers and storms dotted Southern California. The storms on July 13, managed to bring 0.10 of an inch of rain to Downtown Los Angeles.
The spotty, little rain that has occurred thus far west of Arizona has done nothing to impact the exceptional drought ongoing in California, Nevada and Oregon.
In California alone, 33% of the state was considered to be in exceptional drought, which is the worst category of drought level, according to data from the United States Drought Monitor.
A drought emergency remained in effect for 50 of the 58 counties or 42% of the population in California. Major reservoirs have plummeted to historically low levels in many cases for this point in the season.
While the overall amount and extent of rain, the newest surge of moisture remains questionable from Southern California and southern Nevada, as well as point farther to the north, there is a concern amongst AccuWeather meteorologists of what mainly dry thunderstorms might bring.
"We often see thunderstorms with little rain and a significant amount of lightning strikes on the leading edge of monsoon moisture and this may be one of those situations," AccuWeather Meteorologist Matt Benz said.
Locally gusty winds often accompany the thunderstorms in the West. The winds may not only kick up dust in the vicinity, but can fan the sparks and flames produced by lightning strikes. With little or no rain to extinguish these flames, multiple wildfires can quickly spread through the dry brush that has been baking in the sun all summer long.
In Las Vegas on early Monday morning, over 13,000 were without power due to thunderstorms.
Any non-flooding rainfall without lightning would be welcomed.
A small number of the storms will manage to bring enough rain to wet the ground and result in a temporary soaking, while a smaller number still can bring so much rain as to lead to isolated flash flooding and debris flows.
"The pattern is pulling a significant amount of atmospheric moisture westward, so it is possible that some communities in Southern California and Nevada get thoroughly soaked with a risk of flash flooding as well," AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Brian Thomson said.
During Monday morning, showers and thunderstorms managed to unload 0.44 of an inch of rain on Palm Springs, California.
Flash flood watches and warnings were issued across Southern California, southern Nevada and southern Utah on Monday morning. Within 30 minutes after 9 a.m., local time, 0.71 inches of rain was measured in Primm, Nevada, near the state border with California.
As the deluge continued, areas like Pahrump, Nevada, about 60 miles east of Death Valley, saw flash flooding along Highway 160. An estimated .5 to 1 inch of rainfall reportedly fell around the area, with the highest observations pushing 2 inches, according to AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Alan Reppert.
"These seem to be slow moving storms too, so they can dump a lot of rain in a quick time," Reppert said.
For these reasons, hikers are strongly urged to monitor the changing weather not only at their location, but in the distance as well. Lightning can extend outward a dozen miles or more in extreme cases. A downpour miles upstream can produce a torrent of water through canyons and dry stream beds with a mainly clear sky overhead.
At the very least, most residents will notice an uptick in humidity levels during the first part of this week in the West.
"The westward push of monsoon moisture is moving along with the progression of a storm in the middle levels of the atmosphere," Benz explained.
This moisture will then be drawn northward around a large area of high pressure that remains anchored over the central Rockies and Plains this week.
"This circulation will tend to spread the thunderstorm risk into areas that have already been hammered by wildfires so far this summer in Northern California, northern Nevada, Oregon and Idaho as the week progresses," Benz said.
While some increase in moisture in the air may raise humidity levels slightly over the Northwest by midweek, it probably will not be enough to make a big difference in lowering the potential combustion of natural fuels in the region.
As of Monday night, there were 85 large, non-contained wildfires burning in the United States, mostly in the West, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.
In Northern California, the Dixie Fire, which is only 22% contained, had consumed 198,021 acres and destroyed 36 structures as of Monday night. The cause of the Dixie Fire remains under investigation.
In southern Oregon, the Bootleg Fire, which started from lightning strikes, was 53% contained, had burned 409,611 acres and destroyed 184 structures.
Farther southwest, rain from the monsoon has brought some drought relief in portions of New Mexico and Arizona, but at a price.
The combination of torrential downpours, that have repeated or lingered in some cases, on top of rugged and arid terrain has led to incidents of flash flooding.
On Friday, the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office in Arizona shared a video on Twitter of the department's aviation unit saving a stranded driver that drove through a flooded street and got stuck.
Last Tuesday, drenching rainfall centered on Albuquerque, New Mexico, where 1 inch of rain poured down in just 15 minutes near Indian School and Tramway, according to the Albuquerque Journal. The rising waters of the Embudo Arroyo caused three people to be swept away in the flooding. All three bodies have been recovered. Nolan Bennett, a field engineer for Albuquerque Metropolitan Arroyo Flood Control, told local station KOB, there was about 10 to 12 feet of water rushing down the arroyo.
The National Weather Service office in Flagstaff, Arizona, told the Associated Press that more rain fell in some places in northern Arizona than in the whole monsoon season last year. At least one fatality was attributed to the heavy rain in the Flagstaff area after a woman was swept away in floodwaters.
A fresh 1.80 inches of rain was measured in Flagstaff on Saturday, compared to an average of 2.61 inches for all of July. An additional 0.55 of an inch fell on Flagstaff on Sunday and brought the July 2021 total to 5.41 inches.
Phoenix has received nearly two times its normal rainfall for all of July, while Tucson, Arizona, has received 3.4 times the average for the month so far with a whopping 3.7 times the normal rainfall for El Paso, Texas, through July 25.
Other cities at an elevated risk for flash flooding this week include Yuma, Arizona; Las Vegas and Palm Springs.
"There is likely to be a lull or decrease in the amount of drenching thunderstorm activity in portions of New Mexico and Arizona as this mid-level storm hovers off the coast of Southern California for a time this week," Benz added.
Still a lull does not mean that storms will be completely absent and there is still a risk of isolated incidents of flash flooding through this week over the interior Southwest.
Alex Sosnowski is an AccuWeather senior meteorologist.
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- Written by: Elizabeth Larson
Stephen Williams, 37, of Pacifica was arrested following the crash, which took place at 4:10 p.m. Saturday on Highway 20 east of Sulphur Bank Drive, according to a Monday report from the CHP’s Clear Lake Area office.
The CHP said Williams was driving a blue 2004 Toyota Highlander westbound on Highway 20, approaching Sulphur Bank Drive at a high rate of speed.
Randall Wilk, 61, of Oakland was driving a blue 2015 Toyota Prius westbound, directly in front of Williams' Toyota Highlander, while Kristi Crume, 34, of Grass Valley, was driving a silver 2002 Jeep Grand Cherokee eastbound, followed by 70-year-old Kenneth Tomatis of Modesto, who was driving a white 2009 Hyundai Santa Fe, the CHP said.
For reasons that the CHP said are still under investigation, Williams' Toyota Highlander collided with the rear of Wilk’s Toyota Prius, causing Wilk to lose control of the Prius.
Williams’ Toyota Highlander continued in a westerly direction and collided head-on with Crume’s Jeep Grand Cherokee, with the Toyota then continuing in a westerly direction and colliding head-on with Tomatis’ Hyundai Santa Fe, the CHP said.
The CHP said Williams suffered major injuries as a result of the collision and was subsequently arrested by Clear Lake CHP officers, who observed signs and symptoms of alcohol intoxication.
Williams was flown by air ambulance to Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, the CHP said.
Crume had major injuries and was flown to UC Davis Medical Center for treatment, along with two young children, girls ages 1 and 2, who were with her and who had minor injuries, the CHP said.
Wilk had minor injuries and Tomatis was not reported to be injured, with neither transported, the CHP said.
All six of the individuals in the four vehicles were using their safety equipment, the CHP said.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
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- Written by: Elizabeth Larson
The board will meet beginning at 9 a.m. Tuesday, July 27, in the board chambers on the first floor of the Lake County Courthouse, 255 N. Forbes St., Lakeport.
The meeting can be watched live on Channel 8, online at https://countyoflake.legistar.com/Calendar.aspx and on the county’s Facebook page. Accompanying board documents, the agenda and archived board meeting videos also are available at that link.
To participate in real-time, join the Zoom meeting by clicking this link.
The meeting ID is 930 3219 4127, pass code 555254. The meeting also can be accessed via one tap mobile at +16699006833,,93032194127#,,,,*555254#.
All interested members of the public that do not have internet access or a Mediacom cable subscription are encouraged to call 669-900-6833, and enter the Zoom meeting ID and pass code information above.
To submit a written comment on any agenda item visit https://countyoflake.legistar.com/Calendar.aspx and click on the eComment feature linked to the meeting date. If a comment is submitted after the meeting begins, it may not be read during the meeting but will become a part of the record.
At 10:30 a.m., representatives from the Lake County Water Resources Department, Office of Emergency Services, Environmental Health and the Lake County Drought Task Force, a workgroup organized by the California Department of Water Resources, will provide an update on the 2021 declared drought and its relationship with Clear Lake and its watershed.
On May 11, the board passed a resolution declaring a drought emergency that directed reports be made to the board so it can determine whether emergency conditions continue to exist.
That will be followed by a discussion timed for 11 a.m. in which the board will consider an urgency ordinance requiring land use applicants to provide enhanced water analysis during a declared drought emergency.
The Lake County Planning Commission has asked the board for additional guidance on projects with regard to water, as Lake County News has reported.
“The Planning Commission is given a difficult task to deal with many applications that have been working their way through a rigorous process to be considered eventually in their meetings,” said Board Chair Bruno Sabatier in his memo on the item. “During these meetings, water has become, rightfully so, a more sensitive subject matter due to our drought conditions. The Planning Commission has requested the board's assistance verbally multiple times on direction and guidance during these hard and difficult times where economic development and the urgent need to conserve water seem to be clashing.”
Sabatier notes that in the many Planning Commission meetings that he’s observed, including the appeals that the Board of Supervisors has heard, “often times only well reports are provided. Well reports do not provide any scientific review on the impacts that the project may have and offer little to no information to allow our staff to analyze the cumulative impact these projects may have on the surrounding area.”
He’s offering an urgency ordinance that provides guidance to Community Development staff that a hydrology report is required for all projects during the duration of our drought emergency declaration “and that the applicants draft a drought management plan on how to take part in our community in conserving water in comparison to pursue the full potential of their projects. This would impact all projects as water is part of all projects currently being reviewed.”
At 11:30 a.m., the board will consider a proposal from Supervisor Jessica Pyska and Supervisor Moke Simon for an interim urgency ordinance imposing a temporary prohibition — or moratorium — on the issuance of early activation permits for land use projects within the county’s unincorporated area.
Pyska and Simon’s memo to the board explains that the Community Development Department Ad-Hoc Committee has determined that the temporary moratorium is necessary in order to address a significant backlog of applications for early activation permits “and to ensure that such permits are not issued without a thorough consideration of the narrowly-prescribed circumstances pursuant to which such permits may be issued.”
The interim urgency ordinance also is needed to allow Community Development “sufficient time to study and assess various approaches to the land use permitting process to ensure that zoning regulations are developed whereby permittees are not delayed by an early activation process when a streamlined use permit process is more advantageous to effective land use planning, offers certainty to permittees, and fosters critical environmental review and public comment,” the memo explains.
If passed by a four-fifths vote, the urgency ordinance would be in effect for 45 days, Pyska and Simon’s memo said.
They said all early activation applications submitted before the effective date of the urgency ordinance and deemed acceptable by the Community Development Department will be allowed to proceed in the review process.
In other drought-related matters, in an untimed item Sabatier and Supervisor EJ Crandell will ask their colleagues to consider code enforcement priorities during the drought emergency as well as the creation of a code enforcement ad hoc committee.
During the drought emergency, Crandell and Sabatier suggest that code enforcement activities should align with drought-related priorities including illegal cannabis grows, illegal water trucks and hazardous vegetation.
“We feel that with the administrative penalties, an urgency water truck ordinance, and an action plan for attacking these new priorities that a Code Enforcement Ad Hoc Committee should be created to work efficiently and collaboratively to move these action items along,” Crandell and Sabatier wrote in their memo.
They suggest that the ad hoc committee should include themselves along with the interim Community Development director, county counsel, code enforcement manager, sheriff, water district director or their designees.
Also on Tuesday, the board is scheduled to get an update on COVID-19 at 9:06 a.m., present a proclamation recognizing Lake County AmeriCorps CivicSpark Fellows at 9:30 a.m. and hear a CivicSpark presentation on fire mapping at 9:35 a.m.
At noon, the board is set to get a presentation from the Lake Area Planning Council on the regional transportation plan and active transportation plan.
The full agenda follows.
CONSENT AGENDA
5.1: Allocation of cannabis taxes to the Middle Creek Restoration Project design cost.
5.2: Adopt Proclamation Recognizing Lake County AmeriCorps CivicSpark Fellows.
5.3: Approve addition of a special meeting date to the board’s annual meeting calendar for 2021.
5.4: Approve leave of absence request for Social Services employee Bonnie Ceja from Dec. 16, 2021, through June 1, 2022, and authorize the chair to sign.
5.5: Approve revision to the applicant interview travel expense reimbursement policy.
5.6: Approve minutes of the Board of Supervisors Meetings June 8, 2021, June 15, 2021, and June 22, 2021.
5.7: Approve second reading of an ordinance amending Section 21-3.7 of Chapter 21 of the Ordinance Code of the County of Lake by Adopting a Sectional District Zoning Map No. 3.7(b) 1.403.
5.8: Approve second reading of an ordinance amending Section 21-3.7 of Chapter 21 of the Ordinance Code of the County of Lake by Adopting a Sectional District Zoning Map No. 3.7(b) 1.404.
5.9: Adopt resolution to continue participation in the Abandoned Vehicle Abatement Service Authority and extend the vehicle registration fee/service fee for the Abandoned Vehicle Abatement Program and authorize the chair to sign.
5.10: Approve the creation of an extra help museum assistant and extra help museum technician.
5.11: Approve a purchase order for the purchase of a John Deere excavator for county road maintenance, and authorize the Public Works director/assistant purchasing agent to sign the purchase order.
5.12: Approve contract between county of Lake and The Regents of the University of California for training services in the amount of $225,292.50, from July 1, 2021 to June 30, 2022, and authorize the chair to sign.
TIMED ITEMS
6.2, 9:06 a.m.: Consideration of update on COVID-19.
6.3, 9:30 a.m.: Presentation of proclamation recognizing Lake County AmeriCorps CivicSpark Fellows.
6.4, 9:35 a.m.: CivicSpark presentation on fire mapping.
6.5, 10:30 a.m.: Presentation of 2021 drought, Clear Lake.
6.6, 11 a.m.: Consideration of an urgency ordinance requiring land use applicants to provide enhanced water analysis during a declared drought emergency.
6.7, 11:30 a.m.: Consideration of an interim urgency ordinance imposing a temporary prohibition (moratorium) on the issuance of early activation permits for land use projects within the unincorporated area of the county of Lake.
6.8, 12 p.m.: Consideration of presentation by the Lake Area Planning Council on the regional transportation plan and active transportation plan.
UNTIMED ITEMS
7.2: a) Discussion and consideration of code enforcement priorities during the drought emergency; and b) consideration of a code enforcement ad hoc committee.
7.3: CivicSpark Fellow presentation: Amendments to Chapter 23 — Clear Lake Shoreline Ordinance for the Lake County Water Resources Department.
7.4: (a) Consideration to waive the formal bidding process, pursuant to Lake County Code Section 38.2, as it is not in the public interest due to the unique nature of goods or services; and (b) consideration of tenth amendment to the agreement between the county of Lake and Cerner Corp. for Anasazi Software and Support Services for fiscal years 2020-21 and 2021-22 for a sum of $95,000.00 and authorize the board chair to sign the amendment.
CLOSED SESSION
8.1: Conference with legal counsel: Significant exposure to litigation pursuant to Government Code section 54956.9 (d)2)(e)1) — one potential case.
8.2: Sitting as the board of directors of the Lake County IHSS Public Authority: Conference with (a) Chief Negotiator M. Long and County Negotiator C. Markytan; and (b) Employee Organization: California United Homecare Workers Union Local 4034.
8.3: Conference with legal counsel: Existing litigation pursuant to Gov. Code section 54956.9(d)(1): Settling States v. McKesson, Cardinal Health and AmerisourceBergen (“Distributors”), and manufacturer Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Johnson & Johnson, et al.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
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- Written by: Robert Sanders
BERKELEY — California's fire season is in full swing and could well be worse than in 2020, but new tools are on the way to help responders more rapidly locate wildfires once they break out and, ideally, quickly extinguish them before they get out of control.
With the help of a $1.5 million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, a University of California, Berkeley, physicist and a firefighter-turned-scientist plan to outfit spotter planes with improved infrared detectors to learn more about how fires spread. And within four years, they hope to send similar systems into space for 24/7 fire discovery and monitoring.
Real-time airborne infrared data, combined with machine learning algorithms that can map hot spots in thermal images within milliseconds, will help them create “fire behavior” maps for firefighters within 20 minutes of an outbreak.
The detectors can also provide information on flame length and geometry that, combined with wind speed and humidity data, could be modeled to predict where and how fast a fire will spread.
The airborne detectors will provide a proof-of-concept toward achieving the team’s ultimate goal, which is to design an instrument package that would sit on geostationary satellites and continuously look for fire outbreaks over the Western U.S. or other fire-prone areas around the world.
“We plan to build a system that really delivers a better, more detailed spatial characterization of fires to firefighters in real time,” said Tim Ball, a former professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, and founder and president of Fireball Information Technologies LLC, a Reno-based fire assessment and mapping company with operations throughout the Western U.S. “This will also improve our predictive models to a degree that improves firefighter safety and the tactical and strategic decision making on the ground.”
“One study estimated that if you can just discover and get to a fire earlier, you would save $8 billion dollars over a decade,” said Carl Pennypacker, a physicist at UC Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory, or SSL, and co-principal investigator with Ball on the grant. “If firefighters could be alerted to a fire within 10 minutes — if they knew where it was and could get to it, even without any heroic measures, like airborne tankers on constant alert — that saves a lot of money and lives.”
Pennypacker first proposed such a satellite-borne fire spotter more than seven years ago, to be called the Fire Urgency Estimator on Geosynchronous Orbit, or FUEGO.
Since then, he has lowered his sights a bit, he said, looking also at airborne surveillance and hooking up with the ALERTWildfire group at UC San Diego that maintains a network of near-infrared cameras around the state for early confirmation and potential suppression of incipient wildfires.
In the past few years, Pennypacker also connected with Ball, who started Fireball 20 years ago in an attempt to better predict how fires will spread and has connections with Cal Fire, California’s firefighting unit; the National Forest Service, which flies its own fire-spotting planes; and firefighting teams on several continents.
The two teamed up with engineers at SSL — a laboratory that has built more than 100 instrument packages for satellite missions over the past 60 years — to design and build the detector systems.
Pennypacker’s expertise is in analysis software: He was a co-founder of the 2011 Nobel Prize-winning team that in 1998 analyzed light from supernovas to discover dark energy. He and Ball now work with UC San Diego’s ALERTWildfire and High Performance Wireless Research and Education Network, or HPWREN, pioneers in early fire-camera technology and the Internet provider that connects the the so-called pan, tilt, zoom near-infrared cameras, to analyze the images to confirm fires between 1 and 5 minutes after ignition.
Pennypacker said that he and Ball's experience with firefighters leads them to believe “that the information is changing the culture of fire agencies. Because they can understand the challenge of particular fires faster and more thoroughly, they can respond in more effective ways.”
Changing fire regime
“It is not unusual for wildfires to burn for 20 minutes or more before being reported, by which time they can be beyond easy control,” Ball said. The 2018 Camp Fire that destroyed the community of Paradise in Northern California was beyond control before any fire crews could reach the point of ignition. It ultimately burned 340 square miles, took 85 lives and cost more than $24 billion in losses and fire suppression costs. In 2018 alone, California wildfires caused economic losses of nearly $150 billion, according to a UC Irvine study.
“The actual number of fires is down from the 20-year average, but the intensity is up, the size is way up,” Ball said. “Although we have fewer fires, they burn a lot more acres.”
Climate change caused by burning of fossil fuels, Pennypacker said, is one of the major culprits.
“There are many ways in which climate change is impacting fires now: The number of drought years has been high in the last three decades. Warmer temperatures and drought extend the fire season. Higher temperatures reduce the relative humidity, causing especially fine fuels to be drier and more easily ignited. This is especially pronounced at night — fires used to die at night, but now they keep roaring. There are more strong wind events, which both fan flames to higher intensity and carry the resulting embers farther. When the fire-thrown embers land in the drier fine fuels, spot fires erupt carrying fires forward at a much faster speed than just a normal flame front — sometimes up to tens of miles an hour,” he said.
While the tools for fighting fire have improved a great deal — bigger, better aircraft; more agile fire engines; better firefighter training — Ball said it is evident that we are falling behind the increase in fire destructiveness.
Areas that have lagged significantly are persistent, real-time intelligence and predictive understanding of fire spread. These would help firefighters stay a step ahead, rather trying to catch up with the way that fires are changing, he said.
While a handful of companies in the Western U.S., including Fireball, offer assistance — fire-spotting planes, helicopters and drones, as well as modeling software to predict a fire’s movement — Cal Fire, for the most, part relies on planes flown once daily by the U.S. Forest Service and flown only at night, because the standard detectors are unable to handle the enormous dynamic range of infrared radiation required to characterize active fires.
“That is what is different about what we are doing,” Ball said. “We can measure tiny spot fires and huge flame fronts, then deliver maps depicting flame size, intensity — energy release — and rates of spread to firefighters on the ground just minutes later. These fire characteristics are, at the same time, what firefighters need to know for tactical and strategic decision-making and what predictive models need to project future fire conditions.”
Similarly, the UC Berkeley Fuego Group’s geosynchronous satellite payload will fill an unmet need on the basis of solid, cross-disciplinary understanding. Pennypacker says:
“Our satellite design benefits not only from recent advances in infrared imaging, but also from careful study of signal background and considering how best to recognize small fire signals in that background, as well as optimizing the trade-off between spatial resolution and time to detect/report a fire,” Pennypacker said. “The result is that we can scan the entire fire-prone Western U.S. many times per minute and process the sequence to detect fires of about the same footprint as two semi-trailers. This is a breakthrough in fire detection capability.”
Pennypacker and Ball emphasized that the airborne system will play the important role of cross-checking the calculations of small signal detectability and other aspects of calibration for the geostationary instruments.
“The airplane system can measure signal strengths and backgrounds and test data flows and analysis software,” Pennypacker said. “Thus, when we launch the satellite in a few years, we will be flying a well-tested and proven system.”
Robert Sanders writes for the UC Berkeley News Center.